With a vastly improved offensive line, a new running back and Roddy White.
Vick’s never had a receiver worth a damn other than Alge Crumpler. Can’t blame him for having a shitty yards-per-attempt average when the only guy you have to throw to is a 280 pound tight end.
Because they are effective quarterbacks?
Do you really think they would continue to start if they weren’t effective? Really?
About the only stat I didn’t raise was the yards per attempt. And if you want to blame Vick’s poor statistics as a passer on his receivers, feel free (cough McNabb cough), but I ain’t buying it.
It’s the quarterback’s job to make receivers good. The excuse of not having any receivers is an age-old one for both McNabb and Vick.
Tom Brady had no receivers during his three Superbowl wins, Eli Manning had no receivers last year, Jay Cutler has no receivers this year, the Vikings had no receivers last year, Tony Romo had no receivers last year, the list goes on and on. The common factor for all those receiving corps is that the QB was able to elevate his receivers enough that they flourished.
Guys like Steve Smith, Miles Austin and Sidney Rice developed into good receivers through a consistent passing attack. If they had the crapshoot that was Atlanta-era Michael Vick or early 2000s McNabb throwing to them, they may very well have ended up being James Thrash or Freddie Mitchell. (Can’t think of Vick’s receivers in Atlanta offhand.)
I do appreciate the argument that McNabb has been quite successful, but to play devil’s advocate, I think the early-90s Bills were a flawed team because they couldn’t win the big game, and they were far more successful than McNabb’s Eagles. Just winning divisions plus a playoff game or two isn’t the ultimate measure of success. I’d consider a single Superbowl win in a decade of futility (<.500 every year but the Superbowl) to be far more successful than winning the division 10 years in a row with no championship to show for it.
ETA: Ron Jaworski has been running around quoting Bill Walsh’s book to anyone who will listen condemning running QBs. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it boiled down to: If you rely on the athleticism of your QB, you’ll never be able to put together a consistent offense.
Brian Finneran wishes to challenge you to fisticuffs.
You raised his passer rating and his yardage totals, both of which derive from YPA.
McNabb’s passer rating hovered around 82 until TO showed up, and has hovered slightly above that since.
You just made my point for me. Michael Vick’s receiving corps in Atlanta was so bad you can’t even remember their names, even though you remember James Thrash and Freddie Mitchell.
Granted, Mitchell was a bit more colorful than Brian Finneran, Peerless Price, Dez White or Shawn Jefferson.
It’s hard to use normal QB statistics with someone like Vick, because he is basically his own checkdown receiver. There are lots of situations where a normal QB would dump the ball off that Vick runs instead, so those plays are gone from his passing stats.
That doesn’t mean he’s a good QB necessarily, but it does mean it’s not so simple to analyze.
I have no idea why you’d think I would know the Atlanta Falcons remotely as well as I know the division-rival Philadelphia Eagles. Notice how most of my examples were from division rivals of NY teams.
Peerless Price I remember from Buffalo, when he was very good. Odd that he went from very good with Bledsoe to terrible with Vick.
Fold in the rushing numbers into his passer rating and it comes out basically the same, so you can’t point to checkdowns-turned-rushes and say he had some hidden reserve of quality passing that he just opted to take on the ground.
Because you’re a football fan, and you play fantasy football. I know most NFL rosters just as well as I know those of the other NFC South teams.
And Price wasn’t “very good”. He had one 1200 yard season. He didn’t have Eric Moulds playing across from him in Atlanta, either. the NFL is littered with guys who had one thousand-yard season.
I’ll grant you that Vick is hardly the passer that Bledsoe was, but that doesn’t mean he’s not good.
I am not a football fan, I am a Giants and Jets fan. I watch very little football other than Giants and Jets games; maybe a half dozen non-NY games total a year.
Pointing to my history in FF is evidence that I don’t know players around the league, btw.
I guess you’ve kind of got me there.
Have you heard of Steve Young?
The Bills won four consecutive AFC championships. Hard to do that without winning a big game. I personally think 10 division titles are much more impressive feat then getting a couple bounces to go your way in one season. Besides a championship says little about how good one player out of 53 is.
I never really understood why people have such an aversion to running quarterbacks. No the fact that you can run doesn’t instantly make you a good quarterbacks, but it is an added dimension. Among other things it helps the rest of your running game and ties up a defender or two. Often these qbs need to throw more accurately, but you can say that about a lot of non running quarterbacks too. To group them all together and say they are good or not, or that they should all be running backs is silly.
Michael Vick has not been an especially good quarterback. His pro bowl appearances have more to do with how exciting he is to watch than any real success on the field. He has been wildly inaccurate and inconsistent. Randy Moss and Andre Johnson wouldn’t catch his passes 5 yards over their heads. It is possible that he is a better player now than he was in the past, but I reserve my judgment until he plays someone other than a GB team clearly not prepared to play him and Detroit.
Vince Young has shown signs of becoming a quality qb, but isn’t quite their yet. This week was particularly brutal, but he was good down the stretch last year. He just needs to stop having awful games. I will say that using team wins as a stat for a qb is even dumber than using wins for a pitcher in baseball.
Tebrow has played what 2 downs? I think we can reserve judgment.
If it turns out that these players don’t have great nfl careers it will say nothing about anyone except these 3 players. Plenty of running qbs like Mcnair, Mcnabb, and Cunningham have had plenty of success in the nfl.
I don’t follow. Are you saying he made his receivers worse?
That’s a loser’s mentality. I would bet that the 90 Bills to a man would trade in their playoff runs in 91, 92 and 93 in exchange for Norwood making that kick.
No, that’s a sensible mentality. There is something wrong with a person who would prize one fluky moment over consistent success.
Yes, quite sensible. Being sensible is a staple of the loser’s mentality. You don’t strive to be pretty good, you strive to be the best.
Aren’t you a Bucs fan? Give me the Bucs 2000s over the Eagles 2000s any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
ETA: Let me put it another way. In my mental rolodex of past Giants success, the 2000 playoff run pretty much never gets reviewed. The epic fail of that Superbowl sucks the joy out of that entire playoff run, even including the annihilation of the Vikings.
Not the same thing at all. The Buccaneers were consistently successful during the first half of the decade (and the last couple years of the previous one). We went to the playoffs in '97, '99, '00, '01 and '02.
It was the Eagles’ 2000s got Tony Dungy fired. That is, the Eagles were always the team we lost to in the playoffs (three years in a row).
The marlins are the best I can think of a team that was lackluster except for when they won a championship. As you can tell from their lack of attendance, the fans are less than satisfied. Might be an interesting poll question.
My guess is that he thinks that Steve Young, despite throwing for 33000+ yards, including over 4000 twice, and 232 TD’s, including leading the league in 4 different years, is a “running quarterback” as opposed to a quarterback who could run. Hence Jaws’ quoting Walsh’s book about relying on the athleticism of the QB being a bad thing flies in the face of Walsh’s own success with Young.
It’s a stupid point, one I don’t agree with, but I think that’s what he’s saying.
I said the 2000s, not the 90s. And it is a perfect example. Bucs did a whole lot of nothing in the playoffs except for 2002.
From 2000 to 2009:
Bucs went 79-81 in the regular season. Aside from the 2002 Superbowl, they went 0-4 in the playoffs. Pretty clear example of one bright shining season in a decade of otherwise futility.
Eagles went 103-56-1 in the regular season, 10-8 in the playoffs. If we want to even out the comparison by ignoring tehir Superbowl season, they went 8-7 in the playoffs. 8-7 vs 0-4 really is no contest.
Compared to the Eagles, apart from their Superbowl year the Bucs were scrubs in the 2000s. To reiterate, I’ll choose the Bucs of the 2000s over the Eagles in a heartbeat.